Divergent Takes on a Traditional Emerald City Pioneer Day Event

Considering the broader question: Are Emerald City Events "going to the 'dogs?'"

This morning's Standard-Examiner has a chirpy Bryan Saxton write-up today, reporting on yesterday's Emerald City Pioneer Days parade. The article strangely dwells on the world-famous Oscar Mayer Weinermobile for far too long, and mentions that the event itself ran for some two hours. All-in-all the article is quite positive however; and from a detached reader's point of view (we didn't make it to the parade ourselves - sorry,) we got the impression from our reading of this article early this morning that this locally-important annual state holiday event, a long-held tradition in Emerald City, designed to honor our pioneer forefathers - who dragged their families and possessions across the plains in handcarts and covered wagons -- went off without a hitch.

Within the last hour however we have received a dissenting opinion from one of our regular readers, an Ogden native, who's been attending this event on and off for some fifty years or more. We accordingly link the hot-off-the-press comments of gentle Ozboy, who, in his inimitable style asks the probing question, "Does any one hereabouts know who was in charge of the yesterday's parade?"

We invite our gentle readers who attended yesterday's parade to read and compare these two articles. Gentle Ozboy sets forth some troubling observations and raises some interesting questions, we think. Ozboy also offers a plausible explanation for why the parade ran on so long on a sizzling summer morning in late July.

So how about it, gentle readers? Among those of you who attended this event, who wants to throw in their own 2¢?

If you'd like to broaden the discussion to include Emerald City's Pioneer Day Rodeo, or other traditional Emerald City events -- what the heck? We invite you to chime in with your comments, good or bad.

It's a s-l-o-o-o-w news day, after all.